Facts of Mysterious Hanging Coffins of the Bo

When visitors cruise on Yangtze River, you can find many suspended coffins in some sections of the river. The following tell you the facts of suspended coffins of Bo people.
Renovation of the hanging coffins of the Bo people in Gongxian County of southwest China's Sichuan Province has now finished. This has been the biggest ever project to stabilize and conserve hanging coffins in China. 43 have been restored and 16 previously unknown coffins have been found. In the process new light has been shed on the secrets of these mysterious artifacts. Hanging coffins come in three types. Some are cantilevered out on wooden stakes. Some are placed in caves while others sit on projections in the rock. All the three forms can be found in Gongxian where most of China's hanging coffins are located.

The coffins are mainly clustered around Matangba and Sumawan where some 100 coffins are hung on the limestone cliffs to both sides of the 5,000-meter-long Bochuangou.
The Bo people have become lost in the pages of the history of human civilization. There is now some urgency in the work to salvage and protect the last somber record, which they have left us in the form of their hanging coffins.
A Lost Culture
The Bo were an ethnic minority people living astride the borders of modern day Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. There they created a brilliant culture as early as 3,000 years ago. The ancestors of the Bo helped the Western Zhou (c.1100 771 BC) to overthrow the ruling Yin at the end of the Shang Dynasty (c.1600 1100 BC).

The Bo differed from other ethnic groups in their burial customs. Typically hewn from durable hardwood logs, their hanging coffins went unpainted. The most recent hanging coffins were made up to about 400 years ago in the middle and later periods of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), while many of the earliest ones date back 1,000 years to the Song Dynasty (960-1279). To date, the earliest hanging coffin was one found in the Three Gorges area, dating back about 2,500 years to the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC- 476 BC).
The hanging coffin was the most widespread form of burial in ancient southwest China. However, the practice ended with the mysterious disappearance of the Bo People. Those who came after knew them from the hanging coffins and the paintings they left behind like faint echoes on the cliffs. Their ancient flowering of culture like that of the Maya is no more.

Visitors to Matangba cannot help asking: Why did the Bo people bury their dead in hanging coffins? How did they do it? And why did the Bo people disappear?
If you are interested in the suspended coffins and want to witness the real ones, you can join in private tour of China.